United Diversity

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California’s P2P Carsharing Bill Passes Assembly 63-0

Carsharing just took a step forward on June 3rd in California when AB1871 passed the Assembly with zero opposition. The bill now goes to the Senate and could become law before the year is out. We talked about the potential for this bill to accelerate the already fast growing [https:

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We can accomplish more by sharing

This is the first in a series exploring the things I have learned from the open source way during my time at Red Hat. About 9 years ago I joined Red Hat and my life changed forever. As for my background, currently I'm the Senior Vice President of

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Will The Brixton Pound Buy A Brighter Future?

by Leo Hickman Tomorrow the Transition Town movement launches a currency designed to boost local trade and bring communities closer together A Brixton market stallholder . . . ‘It’s Monopoly money,’ says one. ‘I won’t be having anything to do with it’. Photograph: Graeme Robertson It has all the makings of

Activism

The decentralisation of Pirate Bay filesharing

Following a suggestion by Rasmus Fleischer, a leading member of the Pirate Bureau, Torrentfreak concludes [https://torrentfreak.com/its-time-to-sink-the-pirate-bay-and-replace-it-090913/] : “The Pirate Bay will dissolve, but in its place many “new TPBs” will return, just without the familiar domain name and pirate ship logo. This is very similar to a concept

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Strawbale prefab building timelapse – Strohballen Vorfertigung Zeitraffer

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcVHIKUgGkQ&feature=youtube_gdata]Strawbale prefab building timelapse – Strohballen Vorfertigung Zeitraffer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcVHIKUgGkQ&feature=youtube_gdata] This clip is part of film material for a new film about strawbale building: "Houses of straw – Part 2"

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Sheet Mulching: Greater Plant and Soil Health for Less Work

Sheet Mulching by Craig Elevitch and Kim Wilkinson – Permanent Agriculture Resources Why Mulch? Agriculture with mulch in the tropics promotes plant health and vigor. Mulching improves nutrient and water retention in the soil, encourages favorable soil microbial activity and worms, and suppresses weed growth. When properly executed, mulching can significantly

Activism

Supporting a local economy….some observations

Last night I attended a gathering of merchants, service providers and others who support local independent businesses in our town. It was a festive affair of about three dozen featuring a pot luck dinner, good conversation, and a few announcements about the emerging organization. From both a personal and professional

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A French Twist On GDP

Sarkozy proposes measuring happiness. I’m starting to think that French President Sarkozy is a Sightline fan. Last week it was a killer carbon tax [https://www.worldchanging.com/resolveuid/c02e6bca6e3a3ec7631b2bb1214b8f48] proposal; now it’s something else near and dear to our hearts: a national measure of happiness [https://www.

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Wewow Ltd. launch specialist, eco-friendly packaging arm – weEco.co.uk

[Bradford, UK – 7th August 2009] — Bradford-based CD and DVD replication company, wewow Ltd., have announced the launch of their dedicated ‘green' media packaging arm weEco.co.uk. www.weEco.co.uk will showcase wewow’s rapidly expanding range of bespoke, environmentally friendly packaging solutions for the optical media industry.

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Why use Compost Tea?

Compost tea is used for two reasons: To inoculate microbial life into the soil or onto the foliage of plants, and to add soluble nutrients to the foliage or to the soil to feed the organisms and the plants present. The use of compost tea is suggested any time the

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London Vegan Festival

The London Vegan Festival [https://www.vegancampaigns.org.uk/festival/] this year took place in Kensington Town Hall, and was absolutely heaving. Usually, the odds of bumping into another vegan are slightly higher than those of two Esperanto speakers meeting, so hanging out in a hall packed full of them

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Hyperlocal file sharing: The Pirate Kiosk brings the Pirate Bay to the streets

Many sites and projects have rushed to the rescue ever since the Pirate Bay announced its intended sale [https://mashable.com/2009/06/30/breaking-the-pirate-bay-sold-for-7-8-million/] back in June. Opentracker [https://newteevee.com/2009/07/14/post-pirate-bay-a-federated-tracker-network-emerges/] wants to take over the Pirate Bay’s tracker duties, and Torrage [https://torrage.

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Wikipedia + Flickr = Fotopedia

I am a huge fan of Wikipedia, one of the greatest achievements of sharing; I also enjoy wandering around Flickr, although its lack of over-arching organisation makes that hard to do. Maybe this is perfect solution: Fotopedia [https://www.fotopedia.com/], “the first collaborative photo encyclopedia”, which uses text from

3D

MakeHuman Makes Open Source More Human

One of the canards about open source is that it only produces hardcore hacker programs – dev tools, infrastructural stuff etc. – that have little to offer the general, non-technical, *normal* user. While that may have been true ten years ago, things have moved on. For example, here’s MakeHuman [https://www.

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The Diagonal Economy 2: The Impact of Energy Descent

I’ve wondered how to best explain the advantages of the Diagonal Economy in confronting energy descent. I think that reference to an old post addressing “ anti-economies [https://www.jeffvail.net/2005/10/anti-economies.htm]” is perhaps the best framework.There, I discussed the classical sources of economic efficiency: economy

Activism

City Repair LA

[https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OOlW-1cKA6k/Sq0uYsA6GoI/AAAAAAAACkg/uz-B0ftFvdg/s1600-h/mark.jpg] Mark Lakeman stares down the new Bimini Street salamander [https://monsters.monstrous.com/salamander.htm]. Portland architect and activist Mark Lakeman, founder of the City Repair [https://http//cityrepair.org/] movement, is in Los Angeles for a week

Activism

Collaboration for large groups

There is a dialogue taking place over on Transition Culture [https://transitionculture.org/2009/09/11/why-we-need-formal-agreements-for-national-transition-hubs/] , about how Transition hubs relate to the UK network which started this whole Transition idea. If an opportunity arose, to rewrite this MoU collaboratively, we would need a tool which can manage the

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On Opening Up with PHP

PHP is one of the big success stories of open source, so it’s great to read this interview [https://www.techradar.com/news/computing/pc/how-php-became-such-a-huge-success-633591?src=rss&attr=newsintern] with its creator, Rasmus Lerdorf. I was especially struck by these words of wisdom [https://www.techradar.com/

Agriculture

want to start a csa?

In a city? Just Food [https://justfood.org/] will help you! Here’s info on an upcoming workshop series: [https://uniteddiversity.com/?attachment_id=3934] Interested in how to get fresh, local and organic produce in New York City? Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) connects local farmers with New York City

Accomplishments

Open Everything

Today, an Open Everything [https://creativecommons.at/salon/everything] event will take place at the Paraflows Festival [https://www.paraflows.at/index.php?id=124] in Vienna, Austria. Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation is the main speaker. Franz Nahrada [https://p2pfoundation.net/Nahrada,_Franz] and Ralf Schlatterbeck [https://blog.

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Permaculture to the Rescue!!!

Can Permaculture Save the World??? [https://www.permacultureusa.org/2008/10/01/can-permaculture-save-the-world/] from Permaculture USA [https://www.permacultureusa.org/2008/10/01/can-permaculture-save-the-world/] and elsewhere around the net. Editor’s Note: Point one – this article is circa 1998, from the now ceased-publication Permaculture International Journal [https://www.permaculture.org.

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so when you say collapse…

[https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UBjXcgfboak/SqkRN-RiKYI/AAAAAAAABjQ/o0zEKbkAX34/s1600-h/collapse.jpg] This funny thing used to happen when my friend Todd and I discussed peak oil and energy descent back when we were just coming to grips with all of that. One of us would begin to explain a

Accomplishments

Soil Pulverizer Annihilates Soil Handling Limits

We are glad to report that the LifeTrac [https://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=797] -mounted, open source soil pulverizer has annihilated soil-handling limits from our compressed earth brick (CEB) pressing ability. Initial testing achieved 5 ton per hour soil throughput, while The Liberator CEB press [https://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=

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Eat Your Meat

The Vegetarian Myth [https://astore.amazon.com/booksptp-20/detail/1604860804] Reviewed in Permaculture Activist [https://astore.amazon.com/booksptp-20/detail/1604860804]By Peter Bane Permaculture Activist #72, Summer 2009 This book almost literally blew in the door one March day recently and I found myself still engrossed in its captivating

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Jeff Vail on the Diagonal Economy and the Rhizome Organisation

Jeff Vail is starting [https://www.jeffvail.net/2009/08/diagonal-economy-1-overview.html] his long-awaited series on the next step for our post-meltdown political economies (see ToC [https://www.jeffvail.net/2009/08/rise-of-diagonal-economy-and-transition.html] for full project description): An excerpt on how this change may come about in the core